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\chapter*{Foreword}

All computer programmers have their own piles of notes and scribbles. They
have their code examples saved from the past heroic dive into the manuals or
from Usenet, where sometimes even fools fear to follow. (The other body of
opinion is that fools all get free Usenet access and use it nonstop.) It is
therefore perhaps strange that so few books follow such a style. In the
online world there are a lot of short, to-the-point documents about specific
areas of programmming and administration. The Linux documentation project
released a whole pile of documents covering everything from installing Linux
and Windows on the same machine to wiring your coffee machine to Linux.
Seriously. Take a look at The Linux Documentation Project on
\url{http://www.tldp.org} .

The book world, on the other hand, seems to consist mostly of either learned
tomes, detailed and very complete works that you don't have time to read, or
books for complete beginners that you buy for friends as a joke. There are
very few books that try to cover the basics of a lot of useful areas. This
book is one of them, a compendium of those programmers' notes and scribbles,
deciphered (try reading a programmer's handwriting), edited, and brought
together coherently as a book.

This edition of \emph{Beginning Linux Programming} has been reviewed and 
updated to reflect today's Linux developments.

\noindent -- \emph{Alan Cox}
